Insurance policy rules tightened
The Financial Supervisory Commission yesterday tightened rules governing the sales of savings-like insurance policies, restricting them to at least six years in duration.
The commission also imposes a 1 percent fee charge for premature terminations of such insurance policies and bans the offer of cash bonuses to promote policy sales.
The new restrictions are slated to take effect on Sept. 15.
The tightening measures came as domestic life insurers have offered high interest rates and cash rebates to boost sales of savings-like insurance policies. Separately, the regulator required securities houses to install a legal compliance executive to strengthen internal oversight and risk control. Formerly, the legal compliance requirement applied only to banks and life insurance companies.
Trade in goods talks resume
Taiwan and China are to hold talks on the signing of a cross-strait agreement on trade in goods on Sept. 10, Vice Minister of Economic Affairs Bill Cho (卓士昭) said yesterday.
The talks to be held in Taipei are to be the first of their kind in nearly five months, and come despite a lack of progress in the legislature on the review of a cross-strait agreement on trade in services, which was signed in June last year.
TSMC park plan not finalized
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday said that its investment plan for the Central Taiwan Science Park (中部科學園區) in Greater Taichung has not yet been finalized.
The comments came in the wake of wide market expectations that TSMC will build an 18-inch wafer plant in the park. These expectations followed the Environmental Protection Administration’s approval of an environmental impact assessment on an expansion project of the science park after a preliminary review held on Wednesday.
TSMC said that as the environmental impact assessment has to go through a final review, it is too early for the chipmaker to finalize its investment plan.
FIHC opens Montenegro hotel
Formosa International Hotels Corp (FIHC, 晶華國際酒店集團), which operates three hotel brands worldwide, yesterday announced the opening of a new hotel in Porto Montenegro, Montenegro, under its Regent Hotel & Resorts brand.
The 51-room and 35-suite deluxe property is the second hotel operated by FIHC in Europe and the eighth worldwide, which raised the number of hotels and rooms it operates globally to 16 and 3,192 respectively, FIHC said in a statement.
“Porto Montenegro will be one of the economies in the world to show the strongest growth momentum in the tourism industry over the next 10 years, which will benefit the company’s development in the market,” FIHC chairman Steven Pan (潘思亮) said in the statement.
Acer establishes venture fund
Acer Inc (宏碁) yesterday said it had established a venture capital fund to seek out long-term investments that will strengthen its technology development and promise good financial returns.
Acer founder Stan Shih (施振榮), who oversees the company’s cloud computing strategy, said the Acer Venture Capital fund was approved by the board of directors in April this year. It manages more than NT$1 billion (US$33.5 million).
The PC brand has recruited a new executive from outside the company as the investment director for the fund who will take office on Sept. 1, Shih said on the sidelines of an inauguration ceremony for the 11th Acer Digital Innovation Awards in Taipei.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by